For a journo who has found success with decidedly old-school methods, Ed Gordon has some advice for aspiring broadcasters: get on YouTube. “In today’s world… it’s about producing and owning your content,” he told Mediabistro in the latest installment of So What Do You Do?. Gordon also advises young people with dreams of being on the small screen to “learn where your craft is headed,” and talks about the importance of perseverance when it comes to career success.

“There are a lot of people who’ve given up trying to get on commercial television and have gone to securing their own YouTube channels, and I think, at the end of the day, that’s going to be the future of broadcasting,” Gordon said. “People are just going to put stuff out there. They’re gonna have their own YouTube channels, and eventually you’ll be able to buy things from those channels. But I think one of the things that people have to understand is it takes perseverance.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Ed Gordon, Host of Conversations with Ed Gordon?

Baratunde Thurston and the rest of the crew at Cultivated Wit are teaming up with AOL Studios to produce a show called FUNDED. It’ll feature crowdfunded projects from around the country and talk to the entrepreneurs about why they chose such a path. In a blog post announcing the project, Thurston implored anyone who knows of cool, under-the-radar projects to share.

What are your favorite crowdfunded journalism projects?

We all know video channels are the next step for news. It’s one thing if you’re The Atlantic or The Huffington Post. But smaller, regional publications are making the move, too. And it has been a slow, evolving process.

Phillyburbs.com, a Calkins Media Group website based in suburban Philadelphia, has been transitioning its print papers online for the past decade and it’s starting to get serious about video content. The Bucks County Courier Times, one of the group’s papers (and for the record, where my mother works), recently launched The Courier Times Update, a ten minute news broadcast that goes live on their website at 2pm every day. Rachel Canelli, the host of the update, has transitioned from a strictly print reporter to the Courier’s go-to video reporter over the past few years. She doesn’t have any broadcast experience, but like most mid-market journalists these days, she’s learned how produce her own video segments.

 Ever since we had a website, we’ve done video. But it was more random. Three years ago we started a weekly segment called Buzz In Bucks and that evolved from man on the street interviews and hard news to more feature content. Two years ago, we started doing daily news video. That’s when they started handing out iPhones and cameras – it was a big investment, and then everyone was expected to do video. And the photographers got in because the had the capability to shoot video. Within the last year or so, we hired the video consultant and bringing in new players – we hired a new CEO and general manager and we started to put an emphasis on moving to video, by investing in equipment and software to add advertisements into the videos.

How many of you are sitting in a newsroom struggling to stay relevant? It’s not easy. For the team at the Courier, it was about hiring Canelli to head the update, and repurposing other reporters and photographers in the newsroom to add more video content. It’s a bit of a scramble.  Read more

When Vine was launched in January, I immediately thought it could be a new tool for reporters and wrote about it here. I didn’t have any particular good ideas, but was interested to see how people could use it.

Months later, the journalism-focused blogosphere is finally getting excited about it. But going so far as to say it’s “shaking up the news world” is a bit of a stretch.

Frankly, I’m not buying it for two major reasons:

1) The six second, GIF-like looping of video makes Vines some of the most boring video content out there. What could be done with a good photo is instead exploited and worn out with the app. In fact, “Finite Vine” would be a welcome addition.

2) Audio helps with context and Vine’s capability for voiceovers is great. But after seeing some Vines, I’m glad the default volume status is mute. It makes me want to push for other video channels, like HuffPost Live, to run the same way. I’m on a constant mission to hit the mute button on most videos on news websites before playback starts. It feels like a constant attack.

If Twitter is an incessant feed of things you’ll probably never get around to reading, or really need to know, then Vines just add to that noise. There’s a reason why traditional broadcasting organizations haven’t taken to it. You need more than six seconds and a GIF to tell a story. Even if it’s just 24 seconds more and two GIFs — anything is better than a Vine.

Let’s stop the madness.

On the surface, it’s been a huge year for Youtube and its string of premium content providers. The website is becoming bigger, and has recently acquired startup Epoxy to help developers and distributors get their work on the site faster and more frequently. In addition to the rise in Youtube developers like Maker Studios  and Machinima, new premium channels are popping up left and right — fashion and lifestyle network StyleHaul netted $4.4. million in Series A funding this February, and Demand Media’s newcomer Tastemade plans to do the same for food.

But news companies aren’t clamoring to take part in Youtube. In fact, the video company endured a messy breakup last month with Reuters and Wall Street Journal, pulling millions of dollars in funding and laying off more than a dozen contractors in the process. To put it simply: premium Youtube ventures and news do not mix. Read more